How to Properly Dispose of Holiday Packaging Material
Concerned about the environment and making every effort to recycle your holiday wrapping paper and boxes? Recycling is great, but make sure you don’t “wish-cycle.” When people aren’t sure if a material can be properly recycled, they often just throw it in their recycle bin and hope it will get sorted out. But that can cause contamination of valuable commodities and end up causing a lot more material to go to the landfill.
Here are some tips on what can and cannot be recycled after the holiday:
Cardboard boxes are okay to recycle. Be sure you flatten them.
Consider reusing gift boxes, but if you are getting rid of them they should also be broken down. Gift boxes can be recycled if they don’t have foil, glitter, or laminate.
Likewise, consider reusing shopping bags you may have collected throughout the holiday season. Like gift boxes, shopping bags made of craft paper may be recycled in most localities if they don’t have foil, glitter or laminate, though you may need to remove handles not made of of natural fiber.
Wrapping paper and gift bags made of craft paper – like a standard paper bag – are absolutely recyclable. Plain or printed are both okay. Anything with foil, glitter or a laminate (plastic) coating cannot be recycled in most localities.
To further minimize impact on the environment, make sure you’re buying wrapping paper with recycled content!
Ribbons and bows are a big NO for recycling. Recycling centers report that these materials get tangled into the processing equipment, causing entire facilities to shut down numerous times a day. Workers must manually crawl into dangerous equipment with a knife or scissors to physically cut ribbons and bows loose. It is a dangerous task and it really slows down the processing.
Do not bag your recyclables. Many bags used for this purpose are not themselves recyclable, add to landfill waste, and reduce efficiency at the local recycling center at its busiest time of year.
Finally, while most contractors add more trucks and drivers this time of year, it helps if you can be patient and hold onto your excess material to let the centers get caught up or look for another drop off site. And avoid leaving excess material on the ground – many localities consider this illegal dumping.